The Story

On the night of July 8, 1981 , three young black men forced their way into a Tampa residence. There were five victims inside, all of them white: the owner of the apartment, his wife, their twelve-year-old daughter, and a married couple who had come to Tampa to visit. The three perpetrators tied up the five victims, forced them to lie on the floor, robbed them, and removed items from the home. The assailants then kidnapped two of the victims: one of the adult women and the twelve-year-old girl. The perpetrators forced the woman and the girl into the trunk of the perpetrators' Buick. As the perpetrators drove away with the victims, the two male victims inside the house managed to untie themselves, run outside, and note the Buick's license plate. The three black males drove to a rural clearing outside of Tampa , where two of the perpetrators raped their two captives.

The Investigation

The license plate that the male victims observed was ultimately traced back to Douglas and Corlenzo James. Hillsborough County Sherriff's Office detectives included the James' brothers' photos in photo-paks that were shown to the victims shortly after the crimes. Several of the victims identified both James brothers as two of the perpetrators.

Alan Crotzer's photo also happened to be included in the photo-paks. Four of the five victims saw Mr. Crotzer's photo and failed to identify him. One victim, however, did identify him. Specifically, she identified him as the ringleader, the assailant who brandished a shotgun throughout the criminal episode and who raped both the adult woman and twelve-year-old girl. Two of the other victims – both of whom had initially failed to identify Mr. Crotzer's photo – saw their co-victim identify Mr. Crotzer's photo – and immediately decided that Mr. Crotzer was, in fact, the ringleader. Shortly after, HCSO detectives told the victims that they had “picked the people that had perpetrated the crime,” and that Mr. Crotzer was “tied up” with the Buick – even though there was no link between Mr. Crotzer and the Buick. By the time of trial, all five victims were convinced that Mr. Crotzer was guilty.

The Trial

At trial, Mr. Crotzer was convicted on the basis of the following evidence: (1) five victim-witness identifications; (2) blood typing that included him as one of approximately 20% of the population that could have deposited the semen found on one of the rape victims; and (3) microscopic hair comparisons – a science that has now been rejected as unreliable.

Mr. Crotzer testified on his own behalf, and said – as he had said since the moment of his arrest – that he had no knowledge of these crimes and was in no way involved in them.

In addition, Mr. Crotzer presented four alibi witnesses, who accounted for his whereabouts at the time the crimes occurred.

Mr. Crotzer was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to 130 years in prison.

Post-Conviction

For many years, Mr. Crotzer sought on his own to obtain DNA testing on any evidence that remained from his case. In 2002, David Menschel, an attorney, and Sam Roberts, then a law-school applicant, began to work on Mr. Crotzer's case from New York City . In January 2003, Mr. Roberts discovered that, although all of the rest of the evidence from the crimes had been destroyed, five microscopic slides had been accidentally retained in a file folder at a Florida Department of Law Enforcement laboratory. With the agreement of Michael Sinacore of the Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office, the slides were submitted for DNA testing to a lab in Maryland – the first of three rounds of testing in this case. The DNA testing in Maryland did not produce meaningful results.

Meanwhile, in May 2003, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Menschel traveled to Florida and interviewed Mr. Crotzer's convicted co-defendants, Corlenzo and Douglas James. Both James brothers said that Mr. Crotzer had not been present during the robbery-kidnapping-rapes. Jeff Walsh, a private investigator from Tallahassee , then joined Mr. Crotzer's pro bono legal team. He contacted the sisters of the James brothers, who provided important evidence of Mr. Crotzer's innocence and helped the defense team to track down additional witnesses.

In addition to pursuing non-DNA leads, the defense team continued to seek DNA testing on the remaining slides. In 2004, again with the agreement of ASA Sinacore, the slides were submitted for a novel type of DNA testing at a government lab in Britain . This testing, too, failed to produce results. However, in 2005, yet again with the State Attorney's Office's cooperation, the final slides were submitted to a third lab, Forensic Science Associates, in California . That lab obtained a DNA result that proved that Alan Crotzer was innocent of the rapes for which he had been convicted.

The defense team – now including Martin J. McClain, a prominent capital defense attorney, and Jenny Greenberg, Director of the Florida Innocence Initiative – filed a motion to vacate Mr. Crotzer's convictions on the basis of both the DNA and non-DNA evidence.